Society's ChildS


Gold Coins

Greece: 'When Money Dies'

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sat, 11 Jul 2015 19:42 UTC
woman at ATM
© www.thfire.com
"When Money Dies" is the title of a 1975 book by Adam Fergusson, in which he describes the downfall of the Reichsmark in Weimar Germany. A fascinating look at that period of history, one can glean quite a few useful pieces of advice on how to survive a currency crisis. But "when money dies" could also describe the current currency crisis in Greece, in which many Greeks seem to have taken those lessons from Fergusson's account of the Weimar hyperinflation to heart.

Even though the Greek currency crisis isn't a traditional hyperinflationary crisis, many Greeks are trying to get their hands on, and then spend, cash. One of the fears is that bank depositors will be forced to take losses on their accounts, the so-called "haircut". This happened in Cyprus to some larger depositors, but the fear in Greece is that people with even just a few thousand euros in their accounts might be forced to take losses of 30-50% or more. Just imagine that you have $10,000 in your bank account and overnight the government says, "Sorry, your account balance is now $5,000." Overnight, the purchasing power of your bank account has been cut in half.

Comment: The writing is on the wall. Failing to prepare is absolute folly.

Should one prepare for a collapse or not?

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Chart Pie

Raging class war: Anti-gentrification protest in Camden, London ends in violence


RT
Sun, 12 Jul 2015 18:48 UTC
Image
© Still from Ruptly video
Scuffles broke out between anti-gentrification protesters and police in Camden with injuries reported on both sides. Five rally participants have been arrested.

A man has been hospitalized and two police officers suffered minor injuries after about 20 protesters started throwing bottles and pieces of wood late on Saturday, according to police.

Comment: The people are getting more and more fed up with the 'games' governments and bankers are playing on ordinary people.

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Snakes in Suits

Is neoliberalism finally running out of tricks?

Robert Hunziker
ukprogressive.co.uk
Sun, 12 Jul 2015 18:17 UTC
Image
Neoliberalism, the privatization and commoditization of everything that moves, has experienced a great run over the past three decades, jump-started in the 1980s by PM Thatcher and President Reagan, christened in 1951 by Milton Friedman.

Decidedly, "austerity of governmental social programs" is the kissing cousin to "privatization of public assets" as part and parcel of neoliberal principles, for example, Troika (European Central Bank, European Commission, and International Monetary Fund) and austerity "the dismantling and privatization of public health and education systems" (Pablo Iglesias).

Throughout Europe, Troika's influence, or "neoliberalism on steroids," has been hand-feeding kernels of dissent to popular uprisings. The imposition of draconian austerity measures inflicted upon Greece and the Mediterranean nation-states is rapidly, very rapidly, nursing a badly bruised European Left back to robust health.

It's not only Greece where the Left resonates. Thanks to neoliberal dictates amongst the European financial ruling elite, the Left has become fashionably acceptable to everybody in the street, off the street, and across the street. And of even more significance, on a practical basis amongst the aggrieved, the Left appeals more so than ever in recent history, and therein exist a source of strength the Left has sorely missed for decades. "On a practical basis" is meaningful to lots and lots and lots of people whenever social welfare cuts serve to undercut meager livelihoods.
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Stormtrooper

Thugs: Twelve Philadelphia cops caught beating one black man as he screams for help


RT
Fri, 10 Jul 2015 17:08 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Tom Mihalek
A video has emerged which shows a swarm of Philadelphia police officers repeatedly beating a man while he screams for his grandmother's help. The city's police department says that it has launched an internal investigation into the matter.

The nine-minute video shows Tyree Carroll, a 22-year-old African-American, being repeatedly punched, kicked, and possibly tased while lying on the ground during an arrest.

Although the incident occurred on April 4, the video - filmed by a woman from the window of her house - only emerged this week.

The beginning of the footage shows Carroll being beaten by four officers as he screams "Grandma!"

About a minute into the video, another police car arrives with more officers. One cop can be heard yelling: "You're getting the f***ing taser," while another shouts "Tase that motherf***er."

Carroll's grandmother, Nancy Carroll, told NBC News that it was too difficult for her to watch the video.

"I couldn't bear to look at it," she said. "I just shut my mind and looked away."

Carroll's attorney, Shaka Johnson, admitted that her client did have a criminal record, but stated that none of his previous run-ins with police had left him in need of medical attention.


Comment: All that for 5 grams of crack.

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Snakes in Suits

Jeb Bush accuses Obama of creating 'chaos' in the world by using too many big words

Tom Boggioni
Raw Story
Sat, 11 Jul 2015 15:46 UTC
Jeb Bush
In an interview with the Union Leader, aspiring 2016 Republican presidential nominee Jeb Bush took a slap at the foreign policies of President Barack Obama, stating that the leader of the free world uses too many big words and wastes his time at conferences with world leaders instead of forging ahead.

In video captured by C-SPAN, Bush criticized the White House's nuclear negotiations with Iran calling it, "the Clinton-Kerry-Obama foreign policy playing out."

Bush then advocated for more blunt and simple type of statesmanship — reminiscent of the style of his brother, former President George W. Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney — in dealing with world.

Comment: Would this be an example of Jeb Bush's statesmanship: "We need more war so let's get out there and fight."?

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Extinguisher

Violent crime rates surging in major U.S. cities and the economy is not even crashing yet

Michael Snyder
End Of The American Dream
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 11:49 UTC
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Don't let anyone tell you that crime is going down in America. All over the United States, rates of violent crime in our major cities are increasing by double digit percentages. Murders are way up, shootings are way up and rapes are way up. So what is behind this sudden spike in crime? In Baltimore, authorities are pointing to the racial tensions that were stirred up by the riots that erupted in protest to the death of Freddie Gray. But what about the rest of the country? From coast to coast, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in violent crime, and the economy is not even crashing yet. So what is going to happen when the next great economic crisis hits us, unemployment skyrockets, and people really start hurting?

When I was surveying the news today, I was very surprised to learn that the murder rate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has more than doubled so far this year...
Milwaukee, which had one of its lowest annual homicide totals in city history last year, has recorded 84 murders so far this year, more than double the 41 it tallied at the same point last year.
And of course Milwaukee is far from alone. All over the U.S., violent crime is jumping dramatically. Here is more from USA Today...
Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis have also seen the number of murders jump 33% or more in 2015. Meanwhile, Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, has seen the homicide toll climb by 19% and the number of shooting incidents increase in the city by 21% during the first half of the year.

In all the cities, the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In parts of Milwaukee, the sound of gunfire has become so expected that about 80% of gunfire detected by ShotSpotter sensors aren't even called into police by residents, Flynn said.
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Bulb

Kazakhstan sleeping sickness mystery solved: Uranium mine is the culprit


RT
Sat, 11 Jul 2015 11:22 UTC
Sleep disease Kazakhstan
© RT
A closed uranium mine was pinpointed as the culprit behind the outbreaks of a mysterious sleep-inducing disease that has plagued the residents of two villages in Kazakhstan since 2013.

"The cause of the disease... has been established. It's carbon monoxide," said Deputy Prime Minister Berdybek Saparbayev. "There used to be a uranium mine in the area, which is now closed. Occasionally it released carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon [sic, presumably methane] in high concentrations... That is when these 'sleepy disease' outbreaks happened."

Villagers at Kalachi and Krasnogorsky, which stand roughly 600 meters apart, started complaining about strange onsets of sleepiness, nausea and hallucinations in March 2013. Doctors had trouble diagnosing the disease that affected about one in 10 people.

Comment: A commenter on RT pointed out that vaccines might have caused the narcolepsy among children and adolescents, however that idea doesn't explain why adults were falling asleep too. Here is the CDC report regarding the (2009) H1N1 vaccine causing narcolepsy.

The current carbon monoxide outgassing theory seems to be a better explanation.
cpsc.gov

Carbon Monoxide Questions and Answers:

What carbon monoxide level is dangerous to my health?

The health effects of CO depend on the CO concentration and length of exposure, as well as each individual's health condition. CO concentration is measured in parts per million (ppm). Most people will not experience any symptoms from prolonged exposure to CO levels of approximately 1 to 70 ppm but some heart patients might experience an increase in chest pain. As CO levels increase and remain above 70 ppm, symptoms become more noticeable and can include headache, fatigue and nausea. At sustained CO concentrations above 150 to 200 ppm, disorientation, unconsciousness, and death are possible.
See also: Two brothers die after inhaling sewer fumes in Dublin tragedy

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Book 2

How did middle America become addicted to heroin?

Zachary Siegel
The Fix
Wed, 01 Jul 2015 20:18 UTC
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Author of the book Dream Land: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic talks with The Fix.

Sam Quinones' Dream Land marks the timely end of heroin's romanticism. Where you once imagined the netherworld of junk through '50s jazz musicians and the literati shooting up in the Bowery, you now have cheerleaders and football players who have "shape-shifted into lying, thieving slaves to an unseen molecule," writes Quinones.

In Dream Land, a vast, ultra-modern, interdependent web of painkillers, Mexican heroin, aggressive marketing, pain, pill mills and dirty doctors, hangs in a time of cultural excess amidst economic depression, resulting in what we see today, which is a heroin revolution.

How this happened is always asked next. Some people blame doctors for overprescribing. Others blame cheap heroin infiltrating the posh suburbs where kids have time, cash, and no responsibility. But these arguments, while both valid, in isolation do not explain the obscene rise in use, abuse, and mortality prevalent in America's youth today. In Dream Land, much like the real world, everything is connected and irreducible.

Comment: Also read: A World of Hillbilly Heroin: The Hollowing Out of America, Up Close and Personal

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Brick Wall

Hysteria reigns! School threatens to call DHS if parents are late picking up their kids

Joshua Krause
The Daily Sheeple
Thu, 09 Jul 2015 20:36 UTC
kids
Do you have kids? Do you have a job that you have to commute to? More importantly, do you have to drop your kids off at school every morning? I'm sure plenty of you are raising your hands right now. We all have busy schedules, and many of you face a daily race against time to get your kids to school, and to pick them up at the end of the day; and sometimes you're either late or early. But how would you feel if a school threatened to take your kids away for being late?

That's what parents in Salem, Oregon are dealing with after the Swegle Elementary School told them that "Children must be picked up on time. If they are not picked up on time, we will call DHS [Department of Human Services] and you will then have to pick them up at court the next day," and added that "Please do not drop your children off before [7:40 am]. There will not be any supervision. If children are dropped before 7:40 the staff will call the authorities."

Comment: Surely, the parents must feel very comforted leaving their children in the charge of such sensitive and caring school staff. Homeschooling is looking better and better.

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Chalkboard

Congress may expand charter school program despite high failure rate, financial mismanagement

Jonas Presson
PR Watch
Wed, 08 Jul 2015 09:17 UTC
charter schools
As both the House and the Senate consider separate bills that would reauthorize and expand the quarter-billion-dollar-a-year Charter Schools Program (CSP), the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has examined more than a decade of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as well as documentation from open records requests. The results are troubling.

Between 2001 and 2013, 2,486 charter schools have been forced to shutter, affecting 288,000 American children enrolled in primary and secondary schools.

Furthermore, untold millions out of the $3.3 billion expended by the federal government under CSP have been awarded as planning and implementation grants to schools that never opened to students.

Comment: It is just stunning that Congress would even consider expanding the program when faced with the overwhelming evidence of the failure rate of charter schools. It becomes even more curious knowing that the FBI has launched an investigation into this secretive, money-making scheme. One might wonder if palms are being greased to extend the life of a highly lucrative venture.

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